Review

Nattukkari:

Mired truths demisted on life’s stage

By Dilshan Boange

A classic becomes embraced across generations for the timelessness of what it represents in its core; as being relatable to the human heart and sensibilities and accepted for the truthfulness carried in terms of human experience.

Art is at times a creative recreation of our world, to show us our own myriads of shades through a new lens so we may be dazzled for a mere moment out of our mundane existence only to be shown that whichever way we look, it is still this world perceived through our sense faculties that we inhabit.

The wonder of art in that sense is how it reflects our world to our eyes with the use of guises and disguises, only to gently lift the veil and reveal truths we were otherwise blind to about ourselves.

Nattukkari, the Sinhala translation of the French play Colombe by playwright Jean Anouilh presented to the Sri Lankan theatre by veteran actor and playwright Namel Weeramuni, can very rightly be thought of today as a ‘classic’ of Sinhala theatre considering how it has proven its worth to audiences over the course of several decades since it opened on February 5, 1970.

In its core, the play carries the message of how life is finally subject to the universality of impermanence. In its veins the story speaks of how meaningless the human struggles for wealth, fame and power can become.

There is no greater myth plaguing the human consciousness than the delusion of permanence.

It is this myth that drives every character in Nattukkari to ‘perform their role’ and keep the cycle running. The ‘cycle’ of ‘economically driven’ life, from which they see no escape.

As harsh as she may seem, Madam Alexandra is a woman, who although carries a visage of being aloft with her airs of superciliousness and grandeurs is one who knows, very well the ‘hardness’ of the ground she walks on.

The harsh exterior she may bear is, in certain ways, a mechanism for survival; armour which if undone may spell her downfall. She plays her role of survival and progress in ‘a man’s world’. Madam Alexandra is a woman of the world who knows this all too well.

Strength

Survival depends on how far your purse can carry you through the day and ensure your strength is retained to face another day. But sadly Alexandra’s estranged eldest son Julian seems to be blind to those ground level realities.

Being a highly impulsive man who allows himself to indulgently immerse in sweeping emotional turbulence he cannot reconcile with his mother and the stringent rules and demands with which she devised her world in which his childhood became an agonising one bereft of a doting maternal love he had desired.

The play infers that Julian is an idealist with no real grasp of how the world in which his mother worked her way through.

Through the character of Alexandra one sees how the truth of impermanence is elucidated when she says in a very staid but firm voice towards the end of the play, indicating her resignation to the ways of the world, that ‘every cell’ in our body changes, nothing remains static, and to seek permanence in an ever changing universe is futile.

The manner in which veteran actress Malini Weeramuni delivered those lines onstage on August 31 as I sat in the gentle darkness in the Punchi Theatre in Borella spoke soundly of how one of the fundamentals that the Buddha taught about the world – Aniththya or impermanence, is central to the revelation made through the play.

With a notably impactful effect Malini delivered that all important point. Thus emphasising that to search for a decisive, objective, unchanging ‘meaning’ to life, is meaningless. The seasoned actress thus delivered the turning point in the play with a demeanour that highlighted without any doubts about the change in Alexandra’s character.

The once vivacious and sensuously forceful actress had become a weary old woman.

The tones and pitches of her vocal element and the fluidity with which her facial expressions and physical mobility manoeuvred throughout the performance showed how Malini had mastered her role not merely in terms of the character’s attributes but also in respect of how her character should be brought to life in the fabric of the performance. Nattukkari is after all not a solo act but a play with a very lively host of characters.

Understanding your own character and its placement in ‘the narrative of performance’ to complementarily play with the rest of the characters is an attribute of an accomplished stage actor.

It is after all a fine balance of talent that can deliver a well rounded performance. However, in this regard whether the whole cast was well balanced in respect of the talents they displayed on stage that night, is openly questionable.

From the younger players, Surangi Kosala must be applauded for the job she did in bringing to life the role of Colombe. The Colombe which unfolded on stage that evening was girlish and graceful, flirtatious and feisty in the right doses. Her naivety and humility, her beguiling charms, and the inner strength to overcome the forces that seek to exploit her and reduce her to a ‘chattel’ came out captivatingly.

I would say from my point of critical observation that Surangi Kosala held her audience through a performance that was consciously committed to unfold before a live audience.

Unlike screen acting, theatre does not offer ‘a second take’ in performance. And an actor who blunders has not the luxury to ‘scrap’ a line not delivered optimally to his satisfaction.

In some ways it is possible to say that every time an artiste goes ‘on stage’ it puts him on trial. A silent audience sits in judgment over the players. The audience could salute you with rousing ovations, or you could be crucified, by a critic.

Acting in theatre is always dealing with a live audience to the point of ‘living your character in the context of a scripted life’, which of course must be rehearsed intensely.

A cue missed, a line fumbled cannot be redeemed. The stage actor must realise that whenever he is onstage their characters exist in the ‘sensory spectrum’ of the viewer whether they have lines or not.

In this regard the art of handling silence or inertia without altogether ‘switching off’ in character is a tremendous task for any stage actor to achieve while on stage.

Performance

There were a few instances in this respect. I noticed Ruwan Wickremasinghe was ‘switched off’ when the flow of dialogue from the character Georges –Alexandra’s dressmaker, marked a pause in Julian’s lines.

It was somewhat noticeable to me how Wickremasinghe stopped and ‘geared back into character’ when it was his turn to deliver lines. I would not be so censorious as to suggest that Wickremasinghe was poor in his performance.

But I felt he could have been better attuned to the dynamics of stage acting keeping in focus the need for finely nuanced voice variations to give better form to the variety of emotional depths Julian possesses.

There is no denying that Wickremasinghe established his presence on the stage, but there was, as the narrative progressed, a certain monotonous form to his performance in respect of his vocal output.

Visaka Jayaweera who played Georges was forceful in her delivery of voice and persona.

However, I did notice her almost stumble with her lines in two instances when in dialogue with the character of Julian. Her performance too could have benefited from a more controlled interior as opposed to an overtly energised one in those instances.

Madawa Wijesinghe arrived as Julian’s younger brother Paul, a ‘randy dandy’ charmer of the first order, with a presence full of vigour and vibrancy.

However, there was something of an overdrive at times to Wijesinghe’s theatrical output which seemed to sustain at a high-paced, high-pitched delivery of lines and movement.

The lack of variations except for a few instances, created something of a monotony in the portrayal of Paul.

Pleasing elements

The acting talents of Daya Tennekoon, Seneth Dikkumbura and Seneviratne Bandara unfolded satisfactorily while Namel Weeramuni’s appearance as an aged randy dandy was one of the crowd pleasing elements.

He proved through his tone, expression and persona that although an octogenarian, he amply had the zest and vigour to effectively portray a philanderer’s zeal for a luscious beauty.

Surette, the long suffering valet like secretary of Alexandra played by Daya Tennekoon, is a symbol of how the economically endures the demeaning treatment dished out to them by their employers.

He brings out a striking revelation about the plight of the servant under dire circumstances.

The employer becomes an ‘owner’ over the servant in the case of what can be seen with Alexandra and her staff.

A very impactful line that he delivered as to why the likes of him endure indignity done to them by their employer is –“No matter how much they bray, asses too must eat.”

Tennekoon as Surette, on his knees, states in Sinhala, one of the fundamentals that affect every living creature. If one alludes to that line, which may seem somewhat incidental and fleeting, it may carry in it a kernel of truth about how the world works when it comes to people who must earn their keep, and sing for their supper.

Going deeper into that kernel of truth, which becomes then even more telling of the predicament faced by Alexandra and her dependents, one may see that what lies at the heart of Alexandra is a woman conscious of the need for economic strength.

But although she successfully built up a theatre company what she lacked was an able successor to continue as the head of her establishment which is the means of sustenance for all who depended on its profits.

Legacy

Interestingly the successor to Alexandra’s chair was delivered to her by Julian. In Colombe, Alexandra found a capable heir to her legacy. And the moment Colombe arrives donning the frilly wig which was something of a signature of Alexandra, the position to which Colombe was groomed becomes apparent.

It is no wonder, an astounded Julian says that he cannot make her out as the Colombe he knew. Nattukkari, in one way, is a tragedy about parental inadequacies. It is also a tragedy about filial impieties that draw asunder an impetuous son and an imperious mother.

Both as headstrong personalities cannot reconcile with each other because their egoistic self-conceptions have created an impermeable wall between them.

The tragedy on one hand is how Julian cannot see how Alexandra is trying to help him by grooming his wife to be a woman who will be economically empowered and thereby capable of supporting Julian in the long run.

And the tragedy on the other hand is that Alexandra cannot expressly declare how she loves her estranged son despite his disobedience to her.

Grooming his wife to be her successor was perhaps Alexandra’s gift to her first born whom she took to be an impractical dreamer who on his own could not survive in a world that demands pragmatism to develop financial strength in a world driven by economics.

But the vanity and impetuousness in Julian makes him blind to what his mother tries to bequeath him through the love she always had for him.

The level of symbolism that can be seen in the text of the play isn’t in the likeness of postmodernist drama but true to the realist tradition where some of the symbolic elements are embedded in the mundane like how costumes play as signposts to indicate character transformations.

The best example related to how costumes imbue symbolism in the play is when Colombe is donned with Alexandra’s wig and also her dress, and when Alexandra appears with a shawl and sombre looking clothes which announces her resignation to agedness and reneging from the limelight.

Overall in the aspect of costumes the production deserves to be commended. The wardrobe was an element that was very carefully planned out to give a good visual impression and add vitality to drive the impact of the action on stage to the viewer’s eye.

The show was in general a performance delivered with a professional mettle although with areas that could have been improved on.

The production was a good endeavour on the part of Namel and Malini Weeramuni to mark a presence for Nattukkari in the present day landscape of drama and theatre.

And one surely does hope that a play of the calibre of Nattukkari, as time goes by, will recur in its validity through ‘audience demand’ for the benefit of meaningfully enriching the sphere of Sri Lankan theatre.